(Doppler) The Voice is a Dream
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: [Post-epilogue, part of the main Doppler series] Kouji can't understand why his brother sometimes seems like a stranger. He also can't understand what lie his dreams drive him to find, and why it should even matter to him who only wants his family to live happily ever after...
1. 1-01

**A/N:**_ Blame Aiko's Eclipse series/Lightverse for this. Remi's muse decided it wanted to let this idea run wild too. _

_This is part of a long-winded series (see my series list under the subheading "Doppler" to see what order the fics are in; this'll be updated as things are further written/ideas grow and change). For now, it's simply post-frontier, but there'll be AU elements later on (looking at the current fuzzy plan for certain other sequels/side-stories/possible prequels anyhow :D). Or if you're following me and don't want to mess around with the plan, look out for any fic titles that start with [Doppler] – that means it's a part of this –verse._

_And that's enough intro from me. I'll let the stories speak for the rest and indulge my muse's desire for twin-torture. She claims it's been too long. I claim she's not reading right…but she doesn't like to listen to me very often. The story will slowly build up regardless, so enjoy this first instalment!_

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><p><strong>The Doppler Series<strong>

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><p><em>The Voice is a Dream<em>

**1.01**

Someone was whispering in his dreams. Insistently. Louder when he rolled and buried his head into his pillow in an effort to drown it out.

'Can't you see?'

No, he wasn't going to look. But there were hands on his face: sweet but bitter smelling, calloused but smooth, unfamiliar and yet he wasn't recoiling from them, as if he _did_ know them after all…

Those hands flickered past his eyelashes. Pressed on his eyelids. Tugged on them. He felt them opening unwillingly.

'Come now. Don't be afraid.'

But he was afraid, wasn't he? There was no other reason he'd keep them squeezed shut as he was. Why he was trying to stop his eyes opening, instead of fighting those cool hands on his face.

'I'm only showing you the truth.'

He heard another whisper. Somewhere. Sounding familiar – and yet, for a moment, he felt he didn't know it at all.

His eyes opened. He stared at the mirror. At his own face in the shadowed glass. At the scar over his right brow…

No… He wasn't the one with that scar.

'Kouji!' It was a shout, and yet it sounded like a whisper to him. So distant. So far away. Barely recognisable…and yet, why wouldn't he recognise it immediately for what it was? Whose it was?

'Because…' And there was that first voice again, unknown but for some reason both familiar and knowing. '…that voice tells a lie.'

He was slipping away, and unfamiliarity descended upon him, grasping him. Unfamiliar hands – they weren't on his face anymore, but his shoulders –

They made him squirm. He struck against them. He felt those hands let go, those final words still echoing in his ears.

'_That voice tells a lie…'_

What lie was that? And why did he even need to know, he wondered.


	2. 1-02

**The Doppler Series**

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><p><em>The Voice is a Dream<em>

**1.02**

He'd come out of his dream and pinned his brother to the floor in a single, fluid movement. The carpet dug into his pyjama pants. Kouichi's surprised expression stared up at him, hair tousled and half pinned under blankets as well – his blankets, Kouji noticed, wondering why he was surprised. Obviously, Kouichi had tried to wake him, and he'd reacted.

'Sorry,' he mumbled, climbing off. He realised he'd grabbed both the other's wrists, one in each hand. At another time he might have admired his reflexes: trained so diligently through martial arts classes and honed to near perfection in the digital world.

At that point he just wondered what sort of dream had driven him so blindly. 'I'm sorry,' he said again, as Kouichi sat up.

'It's fine.' And he didn't rub his wrists or lift his shoulders in each new breath or any of those things that would give him away. 'What were you dreaming about?'

Kouji blinked. 'Something…' The thoughts flittered away like the dying sunlight as sunset gave way to the black night. 'There was something that made me…' Some negative emotion, he was sure. Anger? Hatred? Fear? 'Uncomfortable?'

'You don't remember?' He tilted his head a little, representing the confusion Kouji thought he felt far better than his own expression, he was sure. He didn't need a mirror to tell him that. Or a light.

For some reason, both those fleeting thoughts made him think of that dream again.

'Kouji?'

Kouji flicked on the light switch. The lamp's glow swept across the room and Kouichi shielded his eyes. Kouji's adjusted quicker, and he'd needed the light. To fix the sheets and find his pillow so he could get back to sleep.

Or maybe all that was just an excuse and he, Kouji, could have done it just as well in the dark. He'd just never tried. If something woke him in the night, it would be on with the light and start over again. As though what came before never happened…

'Good night, Ni-san.'

'Good night, Kouji.' Kouichi lay back down again and Kouji turned off the lamp, beginning the night again. 'Sweet dreams.'


	3. 1-03

**The Doppler Series**

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><p><em>The Voice is a Dream<em>

**1.03**

It wasn't the first time he'd had that dream, but he tended to forget it. That night was an exception only because Kouichi rubbing his shoulder the next morning was a sore reminder. Kouji winced every time he did, though it seemed an unconscious motion on the part of his brother.

Not that Kouji could blame him. Though he'd been half asleep, he had knocked his brother down and pinned him to the floor. And the futon could only block so much of the force.

But things like that were reminders to disrupted nights. Though his father and stepmother didn't seem to note the motions. Nor their friends when they came over afterwards. Nor, he guessed, his birth mother when the weekend was over and Kouichi was back with her. Though the discomfort or pain – whichever it was, he couldn't quite scrummage the courage to ask and nor did Kouichi offer that information on his own – might have faded by the afternoon. Who could know when no-one saw or spoke or questioned.

But that was how things were. He had a similar pain sometimes, and though he felt his brother's eyes on him Kouichi never asked nor commented. He knew, they both knew, the cause of that. That first, unintentional strike from Duskmon that had left a lasting scar on his back. Ironically, that was the only physical scar either of them obtained from their numerous encounters.

Perhaps not surprisingly, it was of that scar, he dreamed of that night. Until the languidly drifting images shifted towards a different scar.


	4. 2-01

**The Doppler Series**

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><p><em>The Voice is a Dream<em>

**2.01**

Kouichi had a scar above his right eyebrow that sometimes throbbed.

It was a reminder of how he'd fallen down the stairs. A memento of that out-of-body experience that was the digital world.

Sometimes…it seemed like the only proof he had that it wasn't all a dream.

And Kouji. And the others. But except on every other weekend when they were together, there was a barrier of distance between them.

And on the phone, there was only a voice that could easily be a dream.

Sometimes, he wondered if it hadn't all been a dream. Because everything went on much the same. Though his mother knew that he knew, though his father knew, and his stepmother which he couldn't still think of as _his_ because he rarely saw her and barely knew here… Nothing else changed. There was school. There was home. There was the community he lived in: the people he saw that weren't quite friends, his classmates…

School, _life_, went on for the most part as normal. Especially outside of their homes.

But while the voices got left behind – to be heard over the phone after school or in person over every other weekend, the scar followed him everywhere, along with its occasional throb.


End file.
